tricks and humble bossiness were also only too transparent. But Connie did
wonder at the genuine thrill which the woman got out of Clifford. To say she
was in love with him would be putting it wrongly. She was thrilled by her
contact with a man of the upper class, this titled gentleman, this author
who could write books and poems, and whose photograph appeared in the
illustrated newspapers. She was thrilled to a weird passion. And his
`educating' her roused in her a passion of excitement and response much
deeper than any love affair could have done. In truth, the very fact that
there could be no love affair left her free to thrill to her very marrow
with this other passion, the peculiar passion of knowing, knowing as he
knew.
There was no mistake that the woman was in some way in love with him:
whatever force we give to the word love. She looked so handsome and so
young, and her grey eyes were sometimes marvellous. At the same time, there
was a lurking soft satisfaction about her, even of triumph, and private
satisfaction. Ugh, that private satisfaction. How Connie loathed it!
But no wonder Clifford was caught by the woman! She absolutely adored
him, in her persistent fashion, and put herself absolutely at his service,
for him to use as he liked. No wonder he was flattered!
Connie heard long conversations going on between the two. Or rather, it
bas mostly Mrs Bolton talking. She had unloosed to him the stream of gossip
about Tevershall village. It was more than gossip. It was Mrs Gaskell and
George Eliot and Miss Mitford all rolled in one, with a great deal more,
that these women left out.' Once started, Mrs Bolton was better than any
book, about the lives of the people. She knew them all so intimately, and
had such a peculiar, flamey zest in all their affairs, it was wonderful, if
just a trifle humiliating to listen to her. At first she had not ventured to
`talk Tevershall', as she called it, to Clifford. But once started, it went
on. Clifford was listening for `material', and he found it in plenty. Connie
realized that his so-called genius was just this: a perspicuous talent for
personal gossip, clever and apparently detached. Mrs Bolton, of course, was
very warm when she `talked Tevershall'. Carried away, in fact. And it was
marvellous, the things that happened and that she knew about. She would have
run to dozens of volumes.
Connie was fascinated, listening to her. But afterwards always a little
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